Brace Me From My Painful, Sudden Fall
by mildlyfree
Summary: What happens after a century of loneliness?


_**Disclaimer: **The characters belong to Tite Kubo-__sensei_. Some of the quotes belong to Sucre. I was prompted by this Bleach List Post. The plot and idea/storyline belong to me.

_**Author's Note:** My first Bleach fanfic attempt-and this was a request from my beloved friend. That being said, please enjoy my fic. Thanks!_

* * *

_-Oh, heaven please help me, help me from falling back again._

I think of her, as I feel the coldness of the deadly blade pierce through my body, as the blood drips from my mouth, as I fold myself limply upon the blade that had impaled me.

I think of her, as I feel Death come upon me.

I think of her as no other thoughts run through my racing mind.

_Rangiku…_

I have always thought of her.

Rangiku. Always.

It has always been Rangiku. There ain't ever been nobody else.

I often told Aizen-_taichou_ that I ain't got no such thing as 'feelings'.

That I can never feel anything for anyone. It ain't exactly a lie.

It ain't totally a lie because I really can't feel anything for anyone—_only her_.

And she ain't just anyone, to me.

She ain't never been.

No. She is always Rangiku, and always had been.

Only Rangiku.

There ain't ever been anyone I care for more than I do for Rangiku.

I did all that I ever did, for her.

I became what I've become, did what I've done, for her; so that I could change things, so that things will never have to end with her tears.

I lay there on the wasted ground, thoughts of her as Death drew near.

Will she feel me? Can she feel me, slipping away?

As this thought came to me, there she is—flying to me.

As I lay there on the wasted ground, she comes flying to me, in tears.

In the end, I did not manage to change things the way I wanted to, huh, Rangiku?

She is calling my name. I hear her calling out to me.

I see her… Calling for me. Crying for me.

_If tomorrow, you become a snake and began to devour people; and then with that same mouth with which you devoured them, you cried out to me that you loved me, would I still be able to tell you 'I love you' the way that I can today?_

_Rangiku…_

Her name breathes out of my mouth, light as the wind, but never going unnoticed.

_Rangiku… I failed, though._

_In the end… I couldn't retrieve what was taken from you, Rangiku._

I look to her as she falls down to my side.

Her tears running down my face, her lips weeping my name.

_Ahh, I knew it._

_I'm glad I apologised. _

* * *

**_-You say that you're leaving, that your hands are only dust._**

I can do nothing, as I stare at him, dying, there on the cold, hard ground.

I can do nothing, but call out his name desperately, repeatedly.

I can do nothing, as my own tears fall upon his face.

Those tears did nothing for him—they did not heal his wounds, they did not even wash his blood away. They are worthless tears.

That was what I thought, as I watch him slip away from me.

That was what I thought, as he said those last words he said to me.

In the end, my tears changed nothing.

_Will I be okay without you, Gin?_

_You have a bad habit of disappearing and never telling me where you went._

_This is just the same thing happening again, isn't it, Gin?_

_…that is what I hate about you._

_Why? Why do you keep doing this to me?_

_Why do you keep leaving me? Why do you keep leaving me in the dark, Gin?_

"_That's too bad_," I recall him saying to me.

"_You coulda kept holdin' on a 'lil longer._

_Good-bye, Rangiku. I'm sorry._"

Those words… they ring in my head in his clear voice so deafeningly.

I will never hear that voice again…

I want to scream, but screaming won't help bring that voice back to me.

And yet, I do scream. I scream all that my pain can muster.

Now Ichigo has taken Aizen away, and I am left to loath myself in this situation.

_You've left me again, Gin. And this time, you're never ever coming back._

_No matter how long I wait for you, this time, you're never coming back to me._

_Gin…_

_"You coulda kept holding on a 'lil longer…"_

I take it to heart, squeezing his hand when he won't even feel it.

_You're dying… and I'm dying for your love._

I hold his hand. I hold his face. For as long as I can, this time.

Until it's time for him to be taken away from me, to a place where there's no return. He will never return to me this time.

His hands are lifeless, only dust.

He changed my life, now he's left my life in the darkness…

No light to wait for, only darkness—everlasting darkness without him.

_Gin, will I really be okay without you?_

_Gin, just where are you going, now?_

_Gin…_

_You told me the day I met you is to be my birthday._

_Then what does the day of your death signify for me, Gin?_

* * *

_**-You've been hiding out, but you have the right to remain**_

Rangiku wakes up on the couch of the tenth division's main office, to find Captain Hitsugaya seated at his desk, working diligently through a towering stack of paperwork.

"_Taichou_," she calls, rubbing her head sleepily, "you didn't wake me up?"

"There is no use waking you up, when I know you won't be getting all this work done, Matsumoto."

He had said this with his usual, stern, serious manner—but there had been a deliberate pause before he gave such a response.

And even in Rangiku's sleepy state, she did not miss that calculated pause.

"Ah! Perhaps _Taichou_ finally noticed all the hard work I have been doing, and realised how tired I must have been!"

"Blubbering fool!" He declares, hitting her head with the nearest hardest thing he could find on his desk.

Within the next few seconds, he had ordered his lieutenant to complete half of the rest of the paperwork by the evening.

The young captain watches his lieutenant secretly, with wary eyes.

In truth, he had realised that lately, Rangiku had been uttering a name in her sleep.

A name he knows is so familiar yet painful for her lips to utter in a waking state.

A name she never mentions anymore.

A name he knows she does not know how to forget.

And as cold as he is, Captain Hitsugaya hadn't the heart to wake her up from a dream that makes Gin a painless memory—

Or at least a memory with a pain that does not resonate a waking mind.

It is past midnight, and Rangiku is sitting by her window, drinking with no company. It is strangely a starless night in _Seireitei_, and she is staring into the darkness from her window.

The darkness that seems to mirror the dark void she has quietly accepted as her life now.

She needs no company to drink with, tonight. Her company is the darkness.

"Gin," she starts, softly talking to the darkness outside her window.

"I miss you… so much."

She feels the wind blow ever so lightly on her face, as though caressing her face gently. Such a sensation reminds her of Gin's touch—

Ever-fleeting, ever-breezy… and a single tear rolls down her cheek.

In her dreams, she is with him. Yet he is never with her.

In her dreams, she talks to him. Yet he never answers her.

In her dreams, he is in troubled waters, thrashing waves trying to engulf him.

In her dreams, those waters were from her tears.

In her dreams, she calls out his name, but he's just floating.

In her dreams, he is just floating away from her. Taken by the crashing waves.

In her dreams, he is drowning, drowning away.

Drowning into her ocean of tears. Into a place she can't reach.

In her dreams she screams at him.

That she isn't going to beg him to come back, that she isn't even going to ask him where he is going.

In her dreams she screams at him, telling him she just wishes he'd say that he hated that it ended in that way. That _they'd_ ended in that way.

That he'd left her in tears.

She sighs the tear away.

_Gin, you just drive me so insane…_

_I have to constantly remind myself that I had been dreaming… constantly remind myself that you being dead is reality._

_That this time, you are never coming back. That _that_ has become my reality._

_And I miss…everything. I don't know how to say good-bye—life's been so trite without you in it. It's been exhausting… trying to forget you is draining me, Gin. _

_Because I can't. I don't know how to forget you._

Yet, Rangiku realises she wants him in the strangest ways she creates him, in her dreams. But she couldn't dream him up.

Because Gin has left her for death. No dream she can create can ever bring him back to her.

_I'll never see you, I'll never ever see you again._

_But in my heart, I know that you still haunt me…_

Chuckling at the darkness, as if it had said something that amuses her, she takes another dull sip of her _sake_.

Swallowing the liquor and feeling it burning down her throat, she starts talking aloud, as if that darkness is a manifestation of _him_.

"So, Gin, _I tried_… I tried to ignore you… it's hard, when I just adore you.

I couldn't make you leave, Gin. No, I didn't want you to leave.

I never did want you to leave, but you keep leaving me, anyway.

And even though I know it isn't going to happen, I keep waiting for you to come back. I keep waiting, even if I know you aren't coming back this time.

My only salvation was to wait for your return… and now I can't even have that to save me from the madness… There is a madness, Gin, and I feel this madness wrapping around me as I wait for you.

Will you watch me, from where you are, when the madness finally takes me?"

Rangiku only says words like these, when she is alone with her _sake_.

The alcoholic beverage is the only thing left in this world that helps her to not feel anything she does not want to feel.

When she drinks, those infinite dreams of him stop.

As she drinks, she becomes numb to the reality of Gin's death.

No love, no loss—she feels only emptiness.

She feels no pain, there's only darkness.

And as she drinks, oh, it shall be the end of her endless sleep.

* * *

**_-Please, say something—'cause everyone thinks you're gone._**

Rangiku couldn't believe what she saw.

She couldn't let herself believe what she saw.

Is this a sign of the madness finally taking her? Had it been real?

_Or has the madness now become her reality?_

Her body disregards her mind as it moves on its own, to follow what she had seen.

After all, her mind is no longer dependable.

It had been a century of loneliness, and her body just instinctively reacted.

If she is to be taken by madness, drowning by the mouthful, it somehow comforts her to know that the madness is in fact, her instinct instead of her unreliable mind.

Yet it is not madness, nor is it ludicrous.

_It is him_—It is Gin in the flesh before her very eyes.

There are certain details about _this_ Gin that her mind is frantically trying to reject.

Like the fact that his hair _isn't_ the unusual shade of silver that she is used to.

Like the fact that his _Kansai_ accent is gone.

"G-Gin?"

After a century of loneliness, a reborn Gin appears right in front of her…

She could not believe it. She does not know how to feel about this.

His name probably isn't Gin anymore, but Rangiku could feel his _reiatsu_ flowing in this reincarnation. Her Gin is deep inside this new body—

It has been a while since she'd felt it, but she will never forget what he feels like.

_And this is him_. She knows it is him, because she can feel him.

The new Gin turns to look to her, and she knows he can see her form not just because he is looking right at her—when he'd seen her, that signature grin that had almost everyone in _Seireitei_ suspicious of him was wiped off, and his eyes were no longer narrowed in conniving slits.

His blue eyes are still the same way as she remembers them, and they looked right at her. Rangiku knows too well that look was Gin's look of sadness.

It is Gin, and she finds herself unable to let him go a second time.

_Just when I was about to stop, Gin…_

_...I hate that about you._

She knows it will be futile to stop herself, so she follows him all day.

There isn't much of the day left in any case, so she reasons with herself that it will not take too long.

So she follows him, resisting the constant urge to reach out and hold onto him.

It took her everything not to scream from overwhelming emotions.

It took her everything not to slap him hard across the face.

And it took her everything to ignore her dislike for his non-silver hair.

She wants to know his new name badly, but no one around him mentions his name. He doesn't seem to be around people much.

_I guess some things just don't change, huh, Gin?_

As night falls and he shuts the lights in his bedroom before sitting on his bed, Rangiku tells herself that her time of reunion with him is almost over.

She will leave once he falls asleep, and he should be falling asleep soon.

But he doesn't—

A length of time passes in darkness between them as she waits for him to sleep, but he does not move from his sitting position on his bed.

In the darkness, Rangiku sees him turn his head towards her, and she is now having trouble keeping her composure.

She does not understand why. She already knew he could see her earlier.

Her loss of composure is perhaps because she did not expect him to acknowledge her so directly.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," he tells her.

And Rangiku can't tell if this Gin still had the same sense of humour she remembers he had, or if he is just plainly declaring it to her.

She considers him in the darkness for quite a while. He does not seem to mind the silence that has befallen them.

Soon, she manages to fully collect herself and asks, choosing her words carefully, "Do I seem familiar to you? At all?"

He takes a short time to answer her, and even in the darkness, she could trace his fox-like face curl into a familiar grin.

"You don't seem familiar, but you feel familiar."

She falls silent—she can no longer stop her emotions at this point. She can no longer stop the tears from forming.

And as those tears fell, he says again, in that gentle tone he used to save only for her, "I don't know your name, but I know you."

Choking between her now free-falling tears, she tells him her name.

_Rangiku_… her name breathes from his lips, light as the wind.

"Your name isn't Gin anymore, is it?" She asks, as she dares move closer towards him. She moves so easily in the dark—now accustomed to it, but also because he is guiding her through the dark. His light flickers, but it is there.

When she sits on the edge of his bed, his grin and tone never falters as he says, "Rangiku… I see no reason to be anyone else to you now, but Gin."

"Gin," she cries, reaching out instinctively to hold his hand. The feel of his hand warm on hers gives her tearful comfort. "Tell me you are happy?"

He does not answer that question, but instead, his hand reaches out to touch her face lightly, wiping her tears swiftly away.

"I always think you're gone, but when I've finally given up, you always show up again. I hate that about you, Gin."

"Now, Rangiku, don't be crying…"

"I waited for you, Gin. For a long time."

His eyes open, peering at her, "I'm back, and I'm sorry."

Her Gin has returned to her—he is right there, in front of her. And yet, she knows there is no way she'd be able to reach him, this way.

She could touch him, but she couldn't reach him.

He has returned, but still in some ways he is gone, and she cannot reach to where he is. Still, despite all this, Gin has returned to her.

She waits, and he comes back. Always.

"Gin…" she caresses his face, wanting to hold onto him just a little longer, just like he'd wanted her to. "_Thank you._"

**-End-**


End file.
